pencil
I have a larger painting carefully approaching the final turn, and I don't want to hurry it just to meet a blog post deadline, so this month's post was going to be either a wee watercolour or a few more figures. The figures won.
Some may have noticed that the World Cup 2018 is currently running its course. I've never really played the game myself for two reasons; a) I was sent to rugby-playing schools (which I loathed), and b) When I did finally find myself being in a football-playing school playground I was rubbish at it and was always stuck in goal (where I hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing). However I got very interested when we started doing the Fantasy Footy at work, and began watching Match of the Day just to be less of an ignoramus. Turns out that it's a lovely game with genuine beauty, indeed Madam gets very involved in a good match, and delights in a classy move when she sees it. This late appreciation has occasionally paid off, and I'm very happy to put on the record that my team – the Prussian Blues – won our little 'Crapleague' this last season – against some clever late plays from Young Mr Richardson's Xhaka Flocka Flames.
The World Cup is an excellent excuse for sitting in front of the telly pretending you're doing something, and I've taken full advantage of that opportunity. Sometimes, though, the guilt breaks through and I feel that I should be doing something a bit more constructive. When this occurs I pick up a pencil and doodle away the dull periods of play. These are some of the more presentable results.
It's actually a very difficult extreme drawing exercise – I find it so anyway – as the action moves very fast (usually), and the camera cuts tend to be rapid. There are dozens of cameras covering every angle of play, and the directors frequently shift from the more static wide shots to close action shots for replays. Some of these are in slow motion, which is fine for the Video Assisted Referees to spot the Bad Boys at work, but I - perhaps rather sniffily - regard sketching through slo-mo as cheating. These drawings (loose squiggles really) have to be done very rapidly indeed, before the visual memory fades, so they are mostly tiny – for instance, the (Brazilian) figure sidefooting the ball, and the stick figure chasing the ball are 4cm and 2cm high respectively.
Anyway, here's a few marks saying 'footballers', normal service will be resumed shortly...
